Wall Street was mixed early Thursday as more Boeing (NYSE:BA) headaches weighed on the Dow and offset hopes that the U.S. and China could avoid escalating trade tensions.
The S&P 500 inched up 12 points, or 0.4%, by 10:24 AM ET (14:24 GMT). The Dow fell 7 points and the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite was up 48 points, or 0.6%.
The South China Morning Post reported that China and the U.S. agreed to a truce ahead of the G20 meeting between Presidents Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump.
The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, reported that Xi is expected to present Trump with a list of demands, including lifting the ban on U.S. companies selling to Huawei, and the lifting of previous tariffs on Chinese imports.
Boeing weighed on the Dow, falling 2.5% after the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration found a new issue with the 737 Max jet's software that it will have to fix before the plane can return to service.
ConAgra (NYSE:CAG) dropped 8.6% after it missed earnings estimates, while Beyond Meat (NASDAQ:BYND) was down 2.2%.
Semiconductor companies surged, lifted by trade hopes. Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) gained 2.2%, while Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) was up 2.4% and Micron (NASDAQ:MU) rose 1.5%.
Elsewhere, KB Home (NYSE:KBH) surged 7.3% after reporting a strong increase in orders in the last quarter.
In commodities, crude oil inched up 0.1% to $59.45 a barrel. Gold futures slipped 0.5% to $1,408.65 a troy ounce, while the U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, was flat at 95.768.
